Wednesday 20 December 2006

Hearing Voices and the Human Holy Spirit

The voices that I hear sometimes tell me that they are the human holy spirit. These voices know some of my thoughts, are a part of my brain and being, and yet are separate from my consciousness in origin, and to do with my outer social and life experiences; and so, like thought itself, they have a rather paradoxical and complex quality. In origin, I believe that
thoughts are not biological, but are created from objective social and life awareness, and which is like a spirit to me. This, to me, is what spirituality is all about, but this awareness of reality and consciousness may falsely be diagnosed as psychotic. My voices are also like messengers, and they tell me things about mental health that otherwise I would not be aware of.

The fact that the voices sometimes appear to know my thoughts, is because they can sometimes guess or predict what I am going to do, say, or think, and so they are not psychic as such, nor necessarily a part of my direct thinking, but are to do with how others have related or not related towards me. The failure to predict behaviours, thoughts, and emotions accurately, and have this model imposed upon people, may in fact be a factor in what actually causes negative hearing voices, and this is to do with the way that others have treated us and related towards us. This may also be to do with bad parenting, and how our parents or parent have falsely predicted that we are bad children; but it is also to do with the way that some social and mental health professionals treat us and relate towards us.

It also appears to me when I hear them, that the voices can be heard by others, but the voices tell me that only I can hear them (as opposed to anyone else in the house), and that therefore I have a special kind of hearing and am in a way psychic. This shifts the context from mental health professionals, and so on, being able to predict or being psychic, to myself being able to predict or being psychic. It's also interesting that predicting behaviours is different from psychic predicting, but the fact that the context has shifted to myself, actually empowers me, and gives me some magical or psychological status and prestige.

I think that the medical model only looks at what goes on inside our heads and brains, but a more social model looks at our social, human, and life experiences. Thus, there is both a medical and a social component to my experiences of hearing voices.

The voices also sometimes tell me that they work through a process of white noise. The white noise, and which is like a hissing sound (which could be interpreted as stress - or the foundation, or background, of sound) is what opens up my awareness, then the voices repeat a vowel sound, and I respond to it with a word or sentence, and then the voices know what to say back to me. Whether this is true or not, it tells me a bit about hearing voices and some of the psychological and linguistic awareness that goes along with it.

I think that people who don't hear voices might be experiencing a form of thought-denial, as I think that voices are an extra and intrinsic function of the human mind and brain. Maybe people who don't hear voices are blocking the awareness off, and are thus in denial about it. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear.

Maybe hearing voices served some purpose in evolution, and that this purpose has shifted from the religious to a social way of thinking. I do not believe in a monotheistic God, but I believe that my voices are like angles or the holy spirit, because they seem to nurture and protect me, but for me they are also human beings. For me, they are the holy spirit, but because they also come from myself and my social experiences and awareness of others, I also call them the human holy spirit. Thus, what the voices call themselves, and what I call the voices, meets, blends, or merges, and forms a circle of unification of self with awareness of others.

Silent Voices, and the Voices and Hearers of different Times, Circumstances or Situations

My voices often develop from my conscious thoughts, in that I imagine what a voice will say and the voice repeats the word or phrase back to me, and then the voice or voices become autonomous from my conscious thoughts and thinking, and say something to me which I hadn't anticipated and which I hear with my ears. Most of the time my voices are positive, but if they become too autonomous they can sometimes turn a bit negative, and that's when I sometimes need psychiatric medication, counselling, or some kind of group therapy for it.

I've got the stage now though where I sometimes hear a silence (although I still sometimes hear white noise), and when I hear this silence, I imagine what the voices will say to me, but it is pure imagination and I don't actually hear the voices with my ears like I usually do, but the voices are
experienced as just inside my head. I do sometimes still hear a hissing sound though, and which acts like a sounding-board to my voices, and sometimes within that white noise I hear the voices as a very faint whisper.

I'm very interested in the social and linguistic pattern of my voices. Often they ask me questions, much like a mental health professional would do. I respond with a reply, and then the voices add a further comment and I reply or respond to that. Sometimes I ask a question back. My voices ask me how I'm doing, and they reassure me that I will be OK if I am feeling anxious or depressed. Not having a partner in my life, I don't normally get that reassurance and love, only from my friends and family.

If I predict all the time what the voices will say and they say it, then the voices tell me that I am blocking them off because I am in control of them. They often say that they know what I'm thinking, but they also say that I know what they're thinking, and so, as they say, it works both ways. This relates to mental health professionals believing that they can predict our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and having a false model of that imposed upon us and which can cause negative hearing voices. Being able to predict what the voices say gives the voice hearer some magical or psychological prestige or status.

The voices also say that when I have certain physical sensations (like a headache for example), that they can feel exactly what I am feeling, because they tell me that they are a part of me, even though they are also experienced as separate from me and to do with my objective outer social and life-experiences.

Sometimes when I am drinking on my own in a pub, I will hear the voices talking to me and respond to them out loud. In this way I am not so alone and can have a conversation with myself, sometimes imagining that others in the pub can hear me and are listening and responding to me. Sometimes I get the feeling that I am connected to some kind of communion, or collective consciousness, where everyone can hear me, and that everyone is talking out loud without listening to each other.

Sometimes I sense that people engaged in conversation with each other are really talking alone, because I can see by their facial expressions and body language that the second or third person isn't responding empathically or communicatively, or I sense that that they are actually talking to someone else in a different time, circumstance, or situation.

I used to have a friend who imagined people being there from his past, and he would talk to these characters from his past in a friendly way, or if they were bothering him he would shout at them. I often wonder whether this is what people are sometimes doing when they are sometimes engaged in conversation with each other - that they are actually talking to people from different past or recent situations and circumstances without realising it. Hearing voices then may just be a conversation with a real other person or persons, in a different time or recent situation or situations, and very much like the ordinary conversation of other people.

Negative and Abusive Power as a Major Cause of Negative Hearing Voices

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
By Bob Dylan

Having false models of predicting a persons emotions, thoughts, and behaviours can be a cause of negative hearing voices. This may be due to bad parenting, and/or due to the way we have been treated by social or mental health workers. Having negative and abusive power forced upon us is a major cause of negative hearing voices.

Hearing voices, and being able to predict what they are saying, gives the voice hearer some magical and psychological status and prestige, in much the same way that it gives social and mental health workers some magical and psychological status and prestige to try and predict our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.

If we don't conform to abusive and false models of predicting our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, instead of just acknowledging that we have freedom of thought and action, we can be labelled as irrational, uncooperative, and psychotic. Unless a person is psychic though, they cannot know or predict what a client is thinking, although abusers like to cause suffering and pain to try and predict and control thoughts and emotions by the threat of violence and coercion and/or indoctrination. Abusive power tries to do much the same thing when it creates negative hearing voices.

It's interesting that if I predict what my voices are saying, then they say that I am blocking them off, much like the way that a social or mental health worker would respond. It's OK for social and mental health workers to try and predict our behaviours, and have false models of this imposed upon us by negative power and coercion, but if we start doing this back to
them and predicting their emotions, thoughts, and behaviours, then they don't like it and accuse us of being uncooperative or blocking them off.

I thought it necessary to explain a bit about predicting the content of hearing voices, as this is a complex process. A prediction of what a voice will say may come either before or after hearing it. My voices usually start off as a conscious thought, then the thought becomes an audible voice, and then the voice can become autonomous from my conscious thoughts and
thinking.

If I think something and then hear it, then this is a way of predicting what the voices will say to me. Sometimes I predict a voice that comes from a conscious thought, and other times I predict an audible voice. Sometimes I predict an audible voice before it actually says something and when it is autonomous, often by guessing or assuming what the context of the word, sentence, or phrase will be in the line of conversation.

Voices that are predicted from conscious thoughts are caused by the way that social or mental health workers try to impose their thoughts and values onto us, and voices that are predicted from autonomous audible voices are caused by social or mental health workers trying to control and suppress our emotions, thoughts, and behaviours. All in all, it is oppression that causes negative hearing voices, and not least because a voice can be a suppressed emotion, or a suppressed wilful effort to initiate a thought or action.

I once slowed down my hearing voices by drinking alcohol. I suppose in this way I was medicating myself. When the voice slowed down I could feel a voice as a need or urge to do something. In this way voices are suppressed thoughts, emotions, and actions, and largely to do with coercion and oppression upon us by others.

In order to eliminate oppression we need to give young people more human rights in society and which are equal to the rest of adult society, and to make the psychiatric, social, and mental health system much more democratic so there isn't as much of a power imbalance. There is a trend to say that responsibilities must come before rights, but I believe that some basic
human rights are primary, such as the right to be free from torture and violence, and free from the threat of coercion and violence.

In order to liberate ourselves, I think that it is necessary to write and publish about our experiences and think for ourselves. In that way ourselves individually and collectively, along with our allies in the system, can change things and come up with better individual and social
models of recovery.